200 people

258 123 UAH (9 340 USD)

73% raised

What is the project about:

A special unit – an Airborne Rescue Group of the 10th Naval Aviation Brigade – has recently addressed People’s Project’s instructors team seeking their assistance. It is the same special unit whose task is to find and rescue pilots of aircraft downed or damaged while flying above the occupied territory.

The video taken by Radio Liberty Ukraine during the drills carried out during one of the project’s recent stages.

A fighter serving in the Airborne rescue group must be a good swimmer and diver possessing high skills in handling diving equipment. His immediate tasks lie in landing on water from an aircraft or helicopter, finding injured on the surface, unfolding a rescue boat or evacuating the injured onboard of a helicopter and providing first medical aid for them.

Still, there is a number of other military tasks the rescue paratroopers have to implement. The group gets also often engaged in nation-wide search and rescue activities on the sea. This means, at any weather conditions, day or night, immediately after the flight clearance command, the servicemen of the ARG are ready to evacuate an injured sailor from a commercial vessel or rescue the fishermen who got in trouble at stormy sea.

In October of 2018, near the port of Yuzhnyi, the instructors of the School of Military Divers project gave a short intensive diving course for the rescue paratroopers. At the same time, our coaches noticed that the unit’s equipment was rather outdated and inappropriate. Everything they had was a few ten-years-old neoprene swimsuits, two Soviet ABM-7 scuba gears and a small motorboat presented to them by volunteers!

The main problem is the impossibility of implementing their assigned tasks in winter time as they lack special dry type diving suits, as wearing thin neoprene swimming suits 5mm thick, a diver can perform his duties underwater and stay alive for just a few minutes. This means the majority of their tasks cannot be performed due to the inappropriateness of their equipment.

What the money will go to:

We decided to support our naval aviators and send them some gear which includes: two special diving suits of a rescue paratrooper Military rescue swimmer drysuit and two special life jackets Para swimmers west.

Diving suits feature a special ergonomic design that does not limit a diver’s movements while swimming; they are light-weight and made of special membrane fabrics which are easily ventilated. This implies divers are able to work wearing these for long hours carrying out their missions in any weather conditions with no risk of experiencing overheat or hypothermia even in ice-cold water.

Rescue life jacket constitutes an inseparable part of a rescue diver’s equipment: it is designed to keep the head above the water surface. The life jacket doesn’t prevent a diver to put his parachute or a suspension system on.

Along with the gear transfer, the instructors of the School of Military Divers are going to conduct another training on diving skills for the fighters of the Airborne rescue group. Thus, the current stage of the Project will substantially enhance the naval aviators’ possibilities in terms of search and rescue on the sea, since your equipment will allow the rescue paratroopers to work in the severest winter weather conditions.

About the Project in general:

The cooperation between People’s Project and the team of experienced instructors of the School of Military Divers exists since 2016. Then, in the course of the first stage, we started to teach swimming (from the scratch) the servicemen of the Sea Guard of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine on the Sea of Azov; later, we bought and sent them equipment for more than a hundred thousand hryvnias. The results of this work exceeded our boldest expectations!

Please watch the HD video below.

Last year we continued training, for the servicemen to be able to meet the standards of military diving that are rather high: the guys need to continuously improve their skills and refine their professional knowledge.

Within the second stage, we supported training and equipped their maintaining teams who carry out operational patrols at sea and maintain the naval infrastructure facilities in a fit and safe condition. Among the other activities, they learned to hold their breath, to work blind, to rescue people on the water and find explosives under the sea.

For the two years of the School of Military Divers’ existence, we provided assistance to many diving units, namely to the 73rd Dozor-M Naval special operations center, the Center for De-mining, and other military units.

• We taught divers; bought new and maintained their present diving gear; helped to organize a swimming competition and a triathlon tournament.

• The Naval Special Forces fighters today work in the equipment we bought them; the Sea Guard servicemen protecting the waters near Mariupol have been trained and equipped within our Project.

• Last year, during the water obstacle course completion, the gear we sent to our military, helped the divers of the Center for De-mining to save three people and pull out two drowned APCs from underwater.

• One of the Project’s former students, a sea guard, took part in the arrest of the Russian Nord vessel.

• Also, thanks to our consulting assistance, the Ukrainian Naval Forces for the first time over many years have managed to renew teaching of underwater welders which is a unique and highly demanding diving specification.

Within the third stage of the project, we spent a quarter of a million hryvnias for purchasing diving equipment and rent of a special pool in the city of Odesa. The team of instructors provided the cadets with freediving equipment, manuals and handbooks, literature, mine and explosives models and the rest of the materials necessary in the course of the teaching process.

The divers got trained both in the pool and on the open waters. During the course we trained their swimming and underwater wrestling skills; exercised some special techniques developed by the US navy seals, as well as mastered their handling the closed cycle apparatuses and underwater scooters.

16:2020March2019

Project budget increased by UAH 109 864. The fourth stage of the project has commenced. This time, we need your help to raise funds to purchase equipment for the rescue parachute-landing group of 10th naval aviation brigade.

17:2225May2018

Project budget reduced by UAH 5 249 at the expense of the reduction of the cost of the pool rental for training.